| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: and seemed, in his words and actions, to discover some
glimmerings of reason." These delighted to converse with me:
they put many questions, and received such answers as I was able
to return. By all these advantages I made so great a progress,
that, in five months from my arrival I understood whatever was
spoken, and could express myself tolerably well.
The HOUYHNHNMS, who came to visit my master out of a design of
seeing and talking with me, could hardly believe me to be a right
YAHOO, because my body had a different covering from others of my
kind. They were astonished to observe me without the usual hair
or skin, except on my head, face, and hands; but I discovered
Gulliver's Travels |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: a similar story. I didn't borrow it, for all that. - I made a
comparison at table some time since, which has often been quoted
and received many compliments. It was that of the mind of a bigot
to the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour on it, the more it
contracts. The simile is a very obvious, and, I suppose I may now
say, a happy one; for it has just been shown me that it occurs in a
Preface to certain Political Poems of Thomas Moore's published long
before my remark was repeated. When a person of fair character for
literary honesty uses an image, such as another has employed before
him, the presumption is, that he has struck upon it independently,
or unconsciously recalled it, supposing it his own.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Rezanov by Gertrude Atherton: cha. "It is true," he said. "Not only would it
be impossible for my conscience to resign itself to
the marriage of my daughter with a heretic--par-
don, Excellency--without the blessing of the Pope;
not only would no priest in California perform the
ceremony until it arrived, but it would mean the
degradation of Governor Arrillaga and myself, and
the ruin of all your other hopes. We should be
ordered summarily to Mexico, perhaps worse, and
no Russian would ever be permitted to set foot in
the Californias again. I would it were otherwise.
Rezanov |
